IRS audits are challenging, but they become even more difficult when a plan sponsor has lost or discarded key records that the IRS requests. Without documentation, defending actions becomes nearly impossible, and missing records -- like a 2015 spreadsheet -- can be seen not as a minor oversight but as negligence. Here's the cold, simple truth.
Cybersecurity is a year-round concern for retirement plan sponsors, not just during Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Developing and maintaining an incident response plan is a key fiduciary duty. This includes preparing for breaches, learning from past incidents, and training internal teams. A strong cybersecurity plan not only protects sensitive data but also boosts employee confidence and demonstrates responsible plan management. This article looks at how such a cybersecurity response plan might be implemented.
Former IBM employees filed a lawsuit claiming the company violated its fiduciary duties under ERISA by failing to replace underperforming target-date and Vanguard mutual funds. The complaint alleges that IBM's continued use of its proprietary All-in-One Life Cycle funds and certain Vanguard options cost plan participants $1.9 billion in lost returns compared to better-performing alternatives like Fidelity and T. Rowe Price.
Without emergency savings, employees are twice as likely to turn to workplace retirement accounts to cover unexpected costs, according to new data shared by Fidelity Investments. And citing data from its 2025 Global Financial Wellness Report, Fidelity notes that the cost of living and impact of inflation lead the way as the top stressor for almost 7 in 10 workers (68%), followed by the state of the economy (62%), and global political events (54%). Consequently, as more employees dip into their retirement savings, the absence of emergency funds increasingly threatens both their long-term financial security and their ability to retire on time.
Smaller retirement plan sponsors are less inclined to implement automatic enrollment, according to Vanguard's recent report, "How America Saves 2025: Small Business Edition." These smaller plans typically exhibit lower participation rates than their larger counterparts, largely due to limited auto-enrollment adoption and participants' generally lower income levels. The report draws on data collected at the end of 2024 from 21,261 small plans -- defined as those with up to $50 million in assets -- and 1,400 larger plans.
"Listen with intention and keep the end goal in sight." This was the central message of the October 28 session at the ASPPA Annual Conference. Amy Garman, QKA®, TPA Internal Retirement Plan Counselor at Capital Group, and Mickie Murphy, CPC™, QPA™, QKC, Director of ERISA Compliance at Prime Capital Financial, emphasized the power of purposeful listening and clear communication. These skills are essential for retirement plan professionals, not only to close sales but also to build lasting client relationships and, ultimately, to serve participants and their families effectively.
As private equity reshapes the retirement advisory landscape and policy shifts open the door to more complex investment options, fiduciaries face a growing responsibility to look beyond surface-level service. Ownership structures, incentive models, and fee flows can subtly, but significantly, impact participant outcomes. The parallels with other service sectors are instructive: when financial engineering overshadows functional integrity, quality can erode. Prudent sponsors and committees must stay vigilant, ask hard questions, and demand transparency, not just to meet regulatory standards, but to uphold the trust placed in them by plan participants. The paper reviews four fiduciary risk channels to watch.
In Seidman v. American Airlines, the court acknowledged allegations of fiduciary breaches related to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investments but ruled that without evidence of financial harm, no recovery could be granted. The decision doesn't endorse ESG investing; it simply underscores that fiduciary claims require proof of monetary loss. This serves as a cautionary note for plan sponsors and fiduciaries.
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Collected Wisdom™
Our researchers look for what they think are some of the better resources available to assist you in administering your plan or helping your clients. We group these resources in our COLLECTED WISDOM™ topics to make it easy for you to locate the information you need. Each item in a category contains a summary and date of when it was placed in the group.
We also maintain some older material in these collections for perspective and context.
